


thaw.

by horror_business



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, Mickey never went to prison, season six and seven WHOM?! they don't exist, takes place a few months after 5x12
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-26
Updated: 2017-10-26
Packaged: 2019-01-23 18:20:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12513476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/horror_business/pseuds/horror_business
Summary: “Why the fuck am I here, Ian?” Mickey asked quietly, sadness dripping from his every word. Ian turned his head and looked up at Mickey, his mouth slightly parted in that depressing pout that he had mastered over the years, his eyes hooded and crying out for an explanation, a reason, fucking anything.“I-I miss you,” Ian said softly but with a strong confident edge.





	thaw.

**Author's Note:**

> I got a two word prompt in my tumblr askbox and it inspired this short piece about reconciliation.  
> Let's see if you can guess what those two words are. ;]

It was 11:15 and he was fifteen minutes late but Ian didn’t dare move besides to bring his slowly burning cigarette up to his lips.  
  
He would be here, he would. Ian was as certain of that fact as he was about the fact that it was going to snow tonight. He could feel it in the air, the quiet stillness that comes right before the snow starts to fall. Everything was calm, the vibrant static in the air palpable but soothing in it’s own way, causing a dull hush to fall over the city.  
  
Ian could smell it in the air too, could smell how crisp and bitterly cold it smelled. He closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the concrete wall as he inhaled deeply through his nose, feeling that very specific comforting smell creep into his chest. He loved that smell, it was the only good thing about winter in his opinion and it only appeared a few short hours before the storm.  
  
He brought the cigarette up to his lips again, hearing the crinkling of the burning paper accompany the rush of hot smoke into his cold lungs. He lifted his head up on the exhale, flicking the end of the cigarette towards the fence as he looked down at his watch for the thousandth time.  
  
11:17.  
  
His leg started bouncing up and down on it’s own volition, his perfectly concealed anxiety making itself known with that small action. “Come on Mick, where the fuck are you?” Ian whispered to himself.  
  
" _I need to see you,”_ read the text that Ian had sent three days ago.  
  
He didn’t get a reply, not sure if the text had even went through or if Mickey had changed his number after all this time. He waited and waited, typing out a few more messages before deleting them. If it was the same number, if Mickey did receive the message, he didn’t want to bombard him.  
  
But he wasn’t above begging. He sent one more text last night, one word. “ _Please_.”  
  
_“Where?”_ read the reply he had finally received early this morning and that’s why he’s here, waiting in the freezing cold, his ass going numb from sitting on the frigid bench of the baseball field dugouts for the past forty minutes. He absolutely would risk getting hypothermia waiting for Mickey. Mickey had risked so much more than that for him.  
  
Ian was about to pull his phone out of his jacket pocket when he felt it. Felt _him_. Mickey’s presence creating a distinct shift in the air, almost as recognizable as the smell of snow. He brought a dull warmth and crackle of electricity, comfort and contentment cloaking Ian’s entire body whenever Mickey was near. It had been the same since he was a teenager and even months and months of separation couldn’t change that.  
  
He looked at the entrance to the dugout and saw Mickey’s silhouette standing there, the lights from the street shining brightly behind him like the universe was saying _“here! Here he is!!”_  
  
Ian went breathless, his eyes widening a bit, his mouth parting in a soundless gasp. “Hey,” he said, the word escaping his mouth in one hot rush, hanging in the air between them. Mickey swiped his thumb against his bottom lip, nodding slightly in acknowledgement.  
  
“You okay?” was the first thing Mickey said and Ian choked down a disbelieving sob that was trying to climb its way out of his throat. He missed that voice, he missed it so fucking much. Of course Mickey would ask that. Of course after fucking everything he would still be concerned about Ian and his wellbeing. Of fucking course Mickey would ask Ian how he was doing, how he was feeling, why would Ian expect anything different?  
  
_No, no I’m not okay because I don’t have you._ “Yeah. I’m-I’m okay,” Ian replied.  
  
Mickey sniffed and nodded his head again, pulling a pack of smokes from his back pocket before shuffling over to sit down on the bench, deliberately sitting far away from Ian. He reached up to place the cigarette between his lips, his soft hands encased in a pair of fingerless gloves, the ones that made it easy to smoke butts in the winter (or gently brush against Ian’s skin). He lit the cigarette and Ian had to hold back his gasp, the light illuminating his face in a soft orange hue, the flame dancing beautifully in his eyes. The globes of his cheeks and the tip of his nose were tinged pink from the bitter cold licking at his soft skin.  
  
Ian’s fingers curled around the edge of the bench, trying to restrain himself from reaching over to touch him. To feel him. To make sure he was real. Ian had seen Mickey quite frequently in his dreams, would reach over when he woke up anticipating the feel of warm velvet skin to greet him but only finding the empty air at the edge of the mattress.  
  
It was quiet, the awkward atmosphere between them heavy with unspoken words and Ian knew he had to be first one to say something. He had rehearsed a whole speech in his head, but seeing Mickey’s face for the first time in five fucking months had rendered him speechless.  
  
_Say something you stupid fuck!_  
  
“How’s Yevgeny?” he asked quietly for lack of anything else to say. He cringed as soon as the words were spoken, afraid he didn’t have the right to ask that question after everything. Mickey’s resulting scoff and dirty look was all the proof he needed of that fact.  
  
“He’s good. Gettin’ fuckin’ big. Got three teeth already, cutting a fourth,” Mickey answered with pride, letting the hot smoke from his lungs waft between his lips as he spoke.  
  
Ian nodded his head and hunched over, looking down at the concrete between his boots. “I remember when the first one started coming up, that one right in the front? God, he was miserable,” Ian said through a small smile.  
  
“Yeah, well, he sure as shit don’t remember you,” Mickey said hotly, his words cutting like knives as he stubbed his cigarette out violently on the bench, the dull hiss of the embers dying accentuating the heat of Mickey’s words.  
  
Ian winced. He deserved that, he did. But fuck if it didn’t hurt. Ian missed that family, _his_ family. That little found family that was brought together the worst way possible but survived through it anyway the best way they knew how. They were making it work, all four of them; him and Mickey and Svetlana and Yevgeny, they were making their weird fucking family _work_ and it was everything Ian wanted but didn’t know he needed until he didn’t have it anymore.  
  
“Fuck. I’m sorry, that was fuckin’ cruel,” Mickey said with a sigh.  
  
Ian didn’t say anything because it even if it was cruel it was fucking true and he needed to hear it, even if it did sting a little. _He’s_ the one that tore their little family apart. _He’s_ the one that left. _He’s_ the one that abandoned Yevgeny and Mickey and there wasn’t a day that passed by where Ian didn’t think about them.  
  
The silence continued to stretch on between them and Ian was powerless to stop it, his lips frozen shut with nervousness and anxiety. Mickey had never made him this nervous, not even when they first started. Everything between them had just flowed naturally, had felt so fucking _right,_ Ian didn’t have time to feel nervous.  
  
“Why the fuck am I here, Ian?” Mickey asked quietly, sadness dripping from his every word. Ian turned his head and looked up at Mickey, his mouth slightly parted in that depressing pout that he had mastered over the years, his eyes hooded and crying out for an explanation, a reason, fucking anything.  
  
_Here we go..._  
  
“I-I miss you,” Ian said softly but with a strong confident edge.  
  
Mickey snorted sardonically, shaking his head aggressively as shot off the bench in a flash. His gloved hands came up to rub through his hair a few times before scrubbing down his face. He was pacing back and forth like a caged animal, like the dugout didn’t have an exit on both sides and was just a fence with one exit that was kept shut with a rusted padlock, keeping him here, keeping him from running away.  
  
Ian was ready now, ready to fight for this. His lips were unstuck and he had to get this out before Mickey shut down. It was time for complete fucking honesty, to just come out and say everything that’s been plaguing his mind since that awful fucking day back in September on his front porch. He had Mickey here, finally, he had to say everything before Mickey disappeared, evaporating back into thin air.  
  
“I do. I really fuckin’ do. Every goddamn day I’m reminded about my fuck up because _you’re_ not there. You’re not there with me and it’s my own fuckin’ fault. I did this. Me. I fucked us up and I miss you so much it _hurts_ . I fuckin’ lov-”  
  
“No! No!” Mickey shouted, stopping his pacing to point an accusatory finger at Ian, those ice blue eyes blazing with fire. “Shut the fuck up, you don’t get to say that shit. You don’t, you-you can’t,”  
  
“Can’t what?” Ian interrupted. “Can’t love you? Well too fucking bad because I do. I always have. I love you Mick, and I’m so fucking sorry that I made you think that I don’t. I can’t change what I did to you no matter how bad I wish I could go back and fix it. I fucking can’t. I made a mistake, a stupid fucking mistake and all I can do now is tell you the truth and apologize and go from there. I love you, so much, and I’m so, _so_ fucking sorry for everything,” Ian said in a rush, his words sounding angry and heated because they were coming from a place of passion.  
  
It got quiet, real quiet after that. Ian didn’t take his eyes off of Mickey. Mickey was just standing there, hands curled into fists at his sides. He wasn’t looking at Ian, his eyes were focused on the snow dusted concrete of the dugout as the rise and fall of his chest got faster and faster with each passing second. Ian could hear the increasingly rapid pace of the inhales and exhales of breath through Mickey’s nose in the silence.  
  
Ian stood up slowly, reaching out with intent to grab onto Mickey’s arm before retracting his hand as quickly as he raised it. When Mickey got like this he hated to be touched, would flinch away from the contact like he was burned with hot coals every fucking time.  
  
“Mickey…” he said softly, taking the smallest step forward. Mickey’s eyes snapped up to Ian’s, his brows furrowed to try to mask the shine of tears gathering at the bottom. “I’m, I’m-” he started, not sure what he was going to say but he felt like he needed to say something, something _more_ .  
  
“I gotta get outta here, I gotta, I gotta,” Mickey said, his voice strained as his eyes darted from side to side. He looked at Ian, his lips pulled together in a tight line as he nodded once and then nearly sprinted out of the dugout and out onto the snow covered field.  
  
Ian’s mouth hung open as he blinked a few times in disbelief. He watched Mickey’s back as he trudged along, his shadow stretching behind him over the moonlit snow. Ian’s heart was racing as Mickey got smaller and smaller the further he walked. Ian ran from the dugout, plowing through Mickey’s footsteps in the snow and disturbing the smooth surface that hadn’t been disturbed all winter.  
  
He was done letting Mickey walk away from him. _He_ was done walking away from Mickey. Never again. Ian would spend his whole life chasing this man if he had to. No one else in this world would make him feel the way that Mickey made him feel.  
  
He grabbed onto Mickey’s arm, halting his movements and Mickey spun around quickly, so quickly Ian was certain he was going to start throwing punches. But he didn’t. He just wrenched his arm out of Ian’s grip, lips curling up in disgust as he growled lowly in the back of his throat, face beat red with anger, his brows creased dangerously low.  
  
“You can’t be saying that fuckin’ shit man!” Mickey said, his voice loud and boisterous but not yelling, just pointed, waving his hand in the air for emphasis. “Christ Ian. You can’t come barging back into my life after five fucking months and expect everything to be like it was. You dumped me, remember? Threw me away like a piece of fuckin’ garbage. You wanted this, not me. _You_. This wasn’t my fucking choice but I had to live with it. You got no idea,” Mickey paused, sniffing a bit, his nose wriggling in that slightly adorable way that it does. He shook his head once before continuing, “you got no fucking idea what the past five months have been like.”  
  
Ian wanted to cry. He wanted to crack open his own chest and spill his fucking guts down onto the ground, the blood still alive enough to melt the snow because he deserved nothing less than that, bleeding out. The last five months hadn’t been a cakewalk for him either but he didn’t have control over that situation, he didn’t have control over his own mind.  
  
But _this_? This fucked up situation with Mickey? Ian had all the control over that and he wielded that control like a sword and used it to slice the ties between them with one quick swipe of the blade, the rope fraying and unraveling further day by day.  
  
He did know what the past five months had been like for Mickey because Mandy unloaded onto him a few weeks ago. They talked on the phone for hours, laughing and gossiping. It felt fucking good, to have her in his life again even if it was just through the crackled line of a phone. It was great until the end of the conversation, when the unpleasant topic that had been weighing heavy on both of them the entire time had to be brought up. He hesitantly asked about Mickey and the careful calm and natural ease that existed between them shattered when she just broke the fuck down and started crying erratically into the phone.  
  
Mickey was worrying her more than he ever did in the past and she was afraid he was going to kill himself, that’s what she confided. " _Not with a bullet or a fucking knife, not like that. But he’s drowning Ian, he’s fucking drowning."_  
  
And Ian could see it, could see Mickey swallowing down glass after glass of booze, even drinking straight from the bottle until he blacked out night after fucking night, isolating himself in his room, music turned up to eleven to feel a little less alone.  
  
Lost. Aimless. Fucking drowning and no one was throwing him a life preserver. It was the catalyst that Ian didn’t know he needed, the catalyst he needed to send that message. _I need to see you_ .  
  
Ian grabbed onto Mickey’s shoulders, squeezing tightly and crouching down a bit so he was eye level with Mickey, making sure that Mickey was looking directly into his fucking eyes before he spoke.  
  
“I can never apologize enough for what I put you through, and I’m not just talking about the break up, all the shit before it too-,”  
  
“You were sick,” Mickey interrupted, his voice quiet, eyes searching.  
  
“I still am, I always will be. But I’m fucking trying Mickey, okay? I’m trying. I’m stable, I’m on my meds, I see a fuckin’ shrink twice a month and spend half the time talking about you. I made it through the fog and the first thing I saw with crystal clear fucking clarity was _you_. And I-I don’t know why it took me so long to reach out to you, I think I was just scared you would hate me. But I fuckin’ love you and I want to spend the rest of my goddamn life with you if you’ll let me; good times, bad, sickness, health, all that shit,”  Ian said fiercely, ending his monologue with another tight squeeze to Mickey’s shoulders.  
  
Throwing out that last line was a little risky, afraid that it would conjure up sour memories and resentment. But he wanted Mickey to know he had heard him, that even after Ian threw the declaration away with a scoff that those words had resonated with him, that they had meant something. That they still do.  
  
Thankfully, Mickey let out a choked laugh as he looked away, reaching up to aggressively wipe away the hot tears that were trailing down his cold cheeks, cutting a path of white through his tinged pink skin.  
  
“Fuckin’ sap,” he said.  
  
Hearing Mickey laugh like that again had Ian going to mush in an instant. It was Mickey’s real laugh, genuine and beautiful and that one laugh was enough to alleviate all the stress and weight that had been sitting on Ian’s shoulders the past five months. That one laugh was enough to have hope grow larger and larger in his chest, blooming like a spring rose.  
  
He brought his hands up to Mickey’s cheeks as he stepped closer. Mickey looked back up at Ian, his face soft and open and so utterly vulnerable. It was the most beautiful thing Ian had ever seen.  
  
“I want to try again. With you. Us. No more bullshit. I love you and I want to spend forever proving that you,” Ian whispered, his eyes flicking down to Mickey’s chapped lips briefly before he placed his forehead against Mickey’s, closing his eyes and reveling in the feeling of being this close to Mickey again.  
  
One of Mickey’s hands came up to grab onto the back of Ian’s neck, the yarn of his glove scratching uncomfortably at Ian’s skin as he squeezed tightly.  
  
“Ian?” Mickey whispered.  
  
“Yeah?” Ian managed to reply right before all the air was sucked from his lungs.  
  
Mickey’s lips were gentle, delicate, barely brushing against Ian’s in hesitation but he felt it. Oh god did he feel it. Ian responded immediately, opening his mouth to allow Mickey to slot their lips together like two puzzle pieces snapping into place. Ian sighed, positive that he was crying into this kiss right now but he couldn’t stop himself. It felt so good, so fucking right and perfect. His body felt warm for the first time in five months, like if he took his jacket off right now he would still be able to survive out here in the cold, could weather the storm with Mickey’s lips on his just like this.  
  
He pulled Mickey closer to him and nearly whimpered as Mickey’s other hand came up to wrap around his waist, willingly pulling Ian closer still, trapping him against his body. They kept it slow, full of passion with no need to speed it up. They were communicating everything right now even though no words were spoken, emotions and feelings sweeping into the other person’s mouth as their tongues tangled and danced.  
  
Mickey tasted just like he remembered. He felt exactly like how he used to feel.  
  
His hands were still cupping Mickey’s cheeks as he pulled back, resting his cold forehead against Mickey’s warm one. Their breath was coming out in humid bursts, clouding out of their mouth’s like smoke and colliding together before rising up into the air and disappearing without a trace. Mickey kept his eyes closed, those thick black lashes fanning out against the pale skin under his eyes. Fuck, Ian forgot how goddamn pale Mickey gets in the winter.  
  
Mickey was shaking, but it didn’t feel like the staccato bursts that sometimes came with laughter and joy. It didn’t feel like the bone deep tremors that came with crying and it didn’t feel like the chilling shivers that vibrate your body during a cold evening.  
  
It was more like his body was finally relaxing, his muscles unclenching from months of being wound up too tight. Warmth and comfort were seeping through his cold veins and thawing out that beautiful heart that was encased in ice for so long that beating regularly again was sending jolts of life through his limbs and fingertips.  
  
“You’re trembling,” Ian whispered, his hot breath fanning against Mickey’s still kiss moistened lips as he grip tightened infinitesimally on Mickey’s cheeks.  
  
Mickey smiled a small smile that could easily be wiped away with the gust from a small breeze. “Fuckin’ freezin’ out here man,” he said as he finally opened his eyes to make eye contact with Ian again.  
  
Ian grinned, his own smile stretching wide and unabashed as he laughed, his laugh coming out thick and somewhat choked from the emotion still clawing at the base of his throat. Everything that still needed to be said and figured out were scratching at him and reminding him the words were still there, ready to come out when the time was right. For now, he just swallowed them down and licked his lips.  
  
“Here, lemme warm you up then,” he said, a cocky grin replacing his jovial smile as Mickey scoffed and rolled those ice blue eyes.  
  
He pulled Mickey back in for another kiss, both of them sighing in contentment on contact. It was slow and steady, the perfect continuance of where they left off. Both of Mickey’s hands rested against Ian’s hips now, his fingers digging in so fiercely that even through all the layers of clothes Ian could still feel the pressure of his fingertips as he held on for dear life, like if he even let go for a fucking second Ian would melt away like a snowball on a summer’s day.  
  
Ian wasn’t sure how long they stood there on the pitcher’s mound completely wrapped up in each other and frankly he didn’t really care. He had Mickey. Here. In his arms. On his lips. In his heart. He had no where else he needed to be ever again, this was it.  
  
Winter was almost over, Spring just waiting around the corner. Soon, the cold and bleak atmosphere that had trapped everyone in the city like somber ghosts would disappear. All the ice and snow would melt as the the warmth from the sunlight caused everything to thaw out in preparation to be resurrected. Grass and weeds would start to flourish again, birds and bees would be awoken from their slumber to bring life and music to the South Side.  
  
And maybe, just maybe, Mickey’s smile would begin to blossom without the frost to hinder it.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!! ♥


End file.
